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Yu Ming Charter School students enjoyed hiking through Dimond Canyon during their service week with FOSC last week.
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FOSC is a volunteer-based, community organization. Your donations go directly to support our projects and programs in the Sausal Creek Watershed. Check out the multiple ways to support FOSC, including contributions to our For the Future endowment fund.
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Don't Miss Our 13th Annual Plant Sale on October 21!
Join us on Sunday, October 21 for FOSC's annual Native Plant Sale and Open House. As in the past, we open our nursery to the public one day a year so you can have your pick of our natives for your garden. Come early for best selection.
Presentations start at 10 a.m. with Native Bird Connections
. All day we'll have experts available to help you select local natives for your outdoor spaces as well as information booths with urban gardening tips. And don't forget about bluegrass music (starts at 1 p.m.), arts and crafts, face painting, and sale sponsor EBMUD with water conservation info -- something for everyone.
Native Plant Sale and Open House
FOSC Native Plant Nursery,
Joaquin Miller Park
Sunday, October 21, 2018,
10 a.m.-3 p.m.
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Thank You to Our Native Plant Sale Sponsors
THANK YOU to our Native Plant Sale and Open House sponsors for making the event possible:
We appreciate your support!
It's not too late to participate as a business or organization sponsor. Please contact Anna Marie
Schmidt at
coordinator@sausalcreek.org
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Explore the Watershed
Things That Turn Red in the Fall
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Epilobium canum on the nursery fence ©2012 Karen Paulsell |
It is nearing the end of the dry season, and the last flowers are blooming away, fading away, disappearing. One of our very latest blooming native flowers is the California fuchsia,
Epilobium canum
, which blooms a brilliant red against ghostly gray foliage. The best place to find it? Right by FOSC's nursery gate--you'll see it when you come help us get ready for the plant sale. Or, since we have a good supply, you'll find it and several of the other red things mentioned in this article available at the sale.
With few flowering plants to attract us, let's look for other red things--we do get a bit of fall color in our foliage. Restoration crew leader Lin Barron reports that the Montclair Railroad Trail has California fuchsia in bloom, the red leaves of a California grape at the LaSalle entrance, and the red leaves of poison oak all over the place. There is easy access to the trail from the LaSalle St. garage in Montclair Village. (You do have to pay to park.)
Enough of flowers and leaves for now, let's look at some berries and fruits. We'll start with some natives. One native that's been described in this newsletter before is our local honeysuckle,
Lonicera hispidula. (See
tinyurl.com/FOSC-honey.) The woody vines of honeysuckles are talented at climbing shrubs and small trees, producing high arching branches and dangling clusters of pink flowers followed by bright red berries. One of the charms of the ripe berries is their translucence; they look like bright little holiday lights in the sun. The nursery's seed collection calendar says we've collected seed from them from September through early November. A great place to check them out is the Bridgeview Trail.
Other red fruits ripening in the fall are the hips on the watershed's three species of roses: wood rose (
Rosa gymnocarpa), California wild rose (
Rosa californica), and ground rose (
Rosa spithamea.) In all three species, the hips start out tiny and green, visible beneath the pink flowers. By now, the petals have faded and fallen, but
R. californica and
R. spithamea hold onto the sepals as the hips ripen. The sepals of the
R. gymnocarpa (
gymnocarpa means "naked seed") have fallen. How do we tell the difference between ground rose and California wild rose? One way is height--the ground rose is short; the wild rose is about waist high. And the wild rose has big, hooked, downward curving thorns, much more impressive than the prickles on its two cousins.
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Can't Find the Creek? It's on the Map!
Our Explore the Coast grant through the Coastal Conservancy has funded field trips for hundreds of students from low-income schools to see the estuary and learn about the Sausal Creek Watershed. As part of the grant, we worked with the talented graphic designer May Woo to produce a map of the watershed from I-580 down to the estuary. The map is replete with illustrations of various landmarks in and around the watershed and will be an important teaching tool for our field trips this fall.
Thanks to May and the Coastal Conservancy for making the
My Sausal Creek Watershed map possible.
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Creek to Bay Day
The Numbers are in!
This Creek to Bay Day in the 'shed was a huge success: nearly 200 volunteers at 11 sites, a substantial percentage for the City of Oakland. Together we filled over four large green waste dumpsters with invasive plant material and picked up 35 bags of trash within the Sausal Creek watershed.
We are grateful to La Farine, Peet's, and Farmer Joe's in the Dimond District and Noah's Bagels in Montclair for their donations to keep our Dimond Park volunteers fueled.
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FOSC Friend of the Month: Alan Tong
Alan Tong is one of our most dedicated volunteers in Joaquin Miller Park, as he is both a crew leader and a site adopter. He leads and co-leads workdays and field trips at the nursery, as well seed collection hikes.
Alan's adopted restoration site is located in Joaquin Miller Park--the triangle of land where Sanborn Road forks on the way to the nursery. He has worked for years on transforming this forgotten median into a beautiful park gateway, spending countless hours hauling wheelbarrows of water to the site, weeding, and mulching.
Alan, thank you for all of the time that you give so freely to Joaquin Miller Park, our nursery, and the watershed as a whole!
Join Alan on one of our nursery workdays this month (Oct. 13, Oct. 19, Oct. 20 & Oct. 27), at the Native Plant Sale and Open House (Oct. 21), or check out other opportunities to volunteer on our
Event Calendar.
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Welcome to our fall Education and Stewardship Intern Alex Mokhtari-Fox. Alex is a graduate of U.C. Santa Cruz and an aspiring naturalist. He has worked on restoration projects from Washington state to the jungles of Panama and has many years of experience as an outdoor educator. Alex will collaborate with our Education and Outreach Coordinator Nicki Alexander on field trips throughout the watershed, assist Nursery and Restoration Manager Jay Cassianni with the plant sale preparations, support volunteer-led workdays, and help tell the FOSC story at the Día de los Muertos festival in Fruitvale on Sunday, November 4. Check out our staff web page to virtually meet Alex, or introduce yourself when you see him in the watershed.
Welcome Alex!
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Registration Still Open for the Alameda County Watershed Confluence
The Alameda County Watershed Confluence is a county-wide conference designed to provide a forum for local groups, community members, and representatives from the public and private sectors interested in creek and watershed health to meet, network, share innovative ideas, and inspire new partnerships in watershed management in Alameda County. FOSC Board Member Jeff Stephens in partnership with Watershed Program Supervisor Kristin Hathaway will speak on the FOSC/City of Oakland partnership, and FOSC Board Member Mark Rauzon will present findings from bird monitoring in the Sausal Creek Watershed.
Thursday, October 17
Oakland Scottish Rite Center
9 a.m.- 4:30 p.m.
Networking event to follow from 4:30-6:30.
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Event Calendar
RESTORATION WORKDAYS
Beaconsfield Canyon
(last Saturdays)
Sat., Oct. 27, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Bridgeview Trail
(2nd Sundays)
Sun., Oct. 14, 9 a.m.-11 a.m.
Bridgeview Trailhead Pollinator Garden
(1st and 3rd Sundays)
Sun., Oct. 21 & Nov. 4, 9 a.m.-11 a.m.
Dimond Park Native Plant Demonstration Garden
Sat., Nov. 3, 10 a.m.-12 p.m.
Mon., Nov. 5, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
Montclair Railroad Trail
(3rd Saturdays)
Sat., Oct. 20, 9 a.m.-11 a.m.
Wood Park
(3rd Saturdays)
Sat., Oct. 20, 10 a.m.-12 p.m.
Trail Crew
El Centro Trailhead
(Last Sundays)
Sun., Oct. 28, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
PALLID CREW WORKDAY
Chabot Space and Science Center
Sat., Oct. 13, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.
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NURSERY WORKDAYS
FOSC Native Plant Nursery
Joaquin Miller Park
Sat., Oct. 13, 1:30-4:30 p.m
Fri., Oct. 19, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Sat., Oct 20, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Sat., Oct. 27, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
NATIVE PLANT SALE AND OPEN HOUSE
FOSC Native Plant Nursery
Sun., Oct. 21, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
ALAMEDA COUNTY WATERSHED CONFLUENCE
The Oakland Scottish Rite Center
Wed., Oct. 17, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Save the Date
NOVEMBER MEMBER MEETING
Dimond Library
Wed., Nov. 14, 7 p.m.-9 p.m.
Mike Moran,
Birds of Prey in the East Bay
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Plants available for purchase at the Native Plant Sale
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Get Involved
Our mission is to restore, maintain, and protect the Sausal Creek Watershed. We educate future generations, involve the community in local environmental stewardship, and collaborate with agencies and other nonprofits to have a positive impact on the local ecosystem.
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FOSC needs your support --
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Contact:
Nicki Alexander
Education and Outreach Coordinator
510-853-3533
Anna Marie Schmidt
Executive Director
510-501-3672
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Photo Credits: Karen Paulsell, Jeff Stephens, Nicki Alexander, Alan Tong, Alex Mohktari-Fox
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